I received a reader request from Najitaka for a guide on how to get started with level 80 heroics in World of Warcraft. He writes:

I had the idea of coming back this time to do dungeons since I've never done much on the PVE side before. I'm finding it hard to get started. Everyone I talk to says I must learn rotations, the fights, etc etc because everyone else has gone through the learning curve and now just expect to do the dungeons as quickly as possible.

My suggestion for the article is to take a level 80 who has never been into PVE and has only done classic dungeons up to ZF, and give me a plan for getting into level 80 dungeons. I haven't decided which class is going to be my main this time so how about doing an article for a healer, tank, and DPS. Any other role is fine too if there are other roles.

Here are some of the things I've been thinking about:1) Do I have to join a guild or will PUG groups work, back in the day a PUG couldn't get anywhere in the tougher dungeons 2) Which dungeon should I start with, I'm just looking to get tokens for better gear and/or some faction with the wyrmrest accord tabbard, I don't have to nor expect to fight the lich king day one 3) I have normal quest gear, a few faction pieces, or full PVP gear only should I bother getting some other gear somewhere before starting dungeons, if so where? 4) What role is the easiest to start in so that I can figure out what is going on 5) What the rules for getting gear, what is the appropriate etiquette 6) Is it worth going back and doing any other non-80 dungeons if only for the story line or the "you've got to see this" experience, like I heard Cavern of Times had some good stories in it

As I guess that this sort of information could be useful for others as well, here is my level 80 heroics starter guide:

The good news for people who haven’t done level 80 dungeons yet is that getting *into* a group for a heroic dungeon is extremely easy since Blizzard introduced the Dungeon Finder and cross-server dungeons. Just click on the Dungeon Finder button (the green cat eye one), select “Random Lich King Heroic”, and queue up. After some waiting time you will get into a random pickup group and this random group will be strong enough to beat the randomly selected dungeon, as the Dungeon Finder only lets you enter dungeons you are strong enough for. You don’t need a guild, although playing with friends might be nicer than playing with strangers. The bad news is that while every Dungeon Finder group is theoretically able to finish the heroic, not every group actually does, because people can give up and leave, or even kick out other players through a vote kick.

The behavior of other people is by definition unpredictable, there are no absolute rules, and you can find yourself grouped with everything from the nicest players to complete jerks. The behavior I am going to describe in the rest of the post is what I have observed as typical behavior in heroic groups, a kind of average observed from doing hundreds of heroic random pickup groups.

The first random heroic you do per day gives two emblems of frost as a reward, of which you need between 50 and 95 to buy an epic with an item level of 264 with, which is equivalent to the epics you can find in Icecrown Citadel, the hardest raid dungeon in the game. Because of this even players with very good raid gear and lots of experience in doing raids and dungeons still do heroics with the Dungeon Finder. Thus when you start out doing heroics, you will inevitably find yourself grouped with people with much better gear, who often already did that heroic dozens of times. Most people want to finish that heroic quickly, and have little patience. Thus if you underperform horribly, there is a chance that the other players will either leave, or kick you out of the group, especially after a wipe.

In spite of an endless discussion what is more important, skill or gear, it is self-evident that your performance in a group always depends on both your skill and your gear. But as your skill is only visible after playing for a while, many people have a strong tendency to judge you on your gear. Thus before starting your first heroic you should have a look at your gear and get it to a point where other players aren’t tempted to already vote kick you out before the dungeon even started. Fortunately that isn’t very hard. What you should avoid is still wearing green gear, that is items whose name is written in green. What you can do is to go to the options panel, interface, display, and turn on the display of item levels. Starting from level 78 you can wear item level 187 crafted blue gear, which is available very cheap on the auction house, and there is really no excuse to not wear at least that before starting out on your first heroic dungeon. If you have a little more money, you can also buy item level 200 blue and crafted epic gear. In total you can get fully equipped with adequate gear for starting heroics for less than 1,000 gold, which is just a few hours of doing daily quests or any other reasonable money-making activity, like gathering ores and herbs, or even just fishing. Many players use an addon called Gearscore to judge the gear of other players, so you might want to install that to look at your own gear.

How your experience of random heroic dungeon goes very much depends on whether you are a tank, healer, or damage dealer (dps). The worst case scenario for a player starting in heroics is playing a tank. Tanks are most gear-dependant, and are in practice setting the pace and leading the group through the heroic, as it is them who should pull. At the very least a tank needs to be “defense capped”, that is have 535 is defense, and he should have both high armor and high health. As a starting tank you already need to spend more than other roles on your starting gear just to reach the defense cap with gems and enchantments, and then you still might meet people who take one look at your health and leave the group. And if it is your first time in a dungeon and you are moving carefully, you will get a lot of comments along the lines of “gogogo”, or impatient dps players pulling and then blaming you when that pull causes a wipe. If you haven’t done level 80 heroics with other characters before, I really do not recommend starting with a tank. If you want to play a tank class, you should at least consider switching to a dps or healing spec, and gaining knowledge and gear with the other spec before trying to tank heroics. On the other hand tanks are always in short supply, and usually have to wait the least amount of time in the queue before finding a group, so once you feel comfortable tanking, this role also has significant advantages.

Healers are the medium case in random Dungeon Finder pickup heroic groups: They also get into a group quite fast, nearly as fast as tanks. And they need less gear to succeed. But as there is only one healer in a group, the healer tends to be blamed for every death, even if objectively the death was caused by other players playing badly. In consequence your experience as a healer in a heroic depends a lot on the skill and gear of the other players. A highly skilled and overgeared tank can make your life extremely easy, up to the point of boredom, while bad players can make your life rather stressful and unpleasant when you get blamed for other players’ faults.

The easiest role for heroics is damage dealer. There are three of them, and those three share the responsibility of dealing enough damage. In many cases the total damage output isn’t even critical for success. As the Dungeon Finder tries to balance groups, mixing highly geared with less geared players, having at least one undergeared dps player in a group is considered normal, and rarely provokes a comment. At worst somebody is going to post a damage meter result at the end of the dungeon showing you having dealt less damage than the tank, but there is next to zero risk of getting kicked out of a heroics group as a dps if you appear at least to be trying. The downside of that cushy job is that everybody wants it, thus queue waiting times for dps are significantly higher than for tanks or healers, and you might well wait 20 minutes for a dungeon to start. Nevertheless this isn’t a bad place to start if you haven’t done level 80 heroics before.

Loot rules in heroics are simple: Most players are there for the emblems, thus you rolling need on anything you would wear, even for another spec than your current one, rarely provokes a comment. The only time you’ll hear people complaining is when another player visited that specific dungeon for a specific piece of gear, and you rolled higher than him on the need roll. As long as you don’t roll need on some item which is unsuitable for your class, I’d say you shouldn’t be shy about using need.

Other than for random heroics, you might also want to use the Dungeon Finder to find a group for specific dungeons. Especially for starting level 80 players, the Trial of the Champion and Forge of Souls dungeons on normal difficulty are good, because they drop better loot than heroics. Once you did the quest you get at the start of the Forge of Souls, you will be allowed to enter the Pit of Saron, and after that the Halls of Reflection, all of which give good epic loot as well on normal. Run all of these a couple of times until you have most of the loot for your class from there.

You might have read some horrible stories about pickup groups. Most of them are true, and there are really some abominable jerks out there who can really make a group unpleasant. But these bad pickup groups are a lot less common than you might think. The typical heroic group is efficient, and a bit boring. Over 90% of the random pickup groups I joined managed to get to the end of the dungeon. We just tend to remember the bad ones more, and they make for better writing material. Overall the Dungeon Finder has much improved the experience of doing PvE group content, and I can really only recommend trying it.
- posted by Tobold Stoutfoot @ 9:29 AM Permanent Link
Links to this post

Comments:

I had a similar problem. I was off wow after hitting 80 and rejoined after a few months to see my guild has moved on.

I am dps, so its easier for me. Since I am a huntard, people really take me easy ;)

Here are some general steps I would advice.1. go get your gear checked at be.imba.hu. It will show where you are placed as per heroics, the enchants you are missing etc. 2. go to wow-loot.com . It gives you tables of boss loots from instances - both normal and heroic. 3. do 'normal' heroics if you have too many greens. 4. queue up for a heroic dungeon. As mentioned in the main article, the dungeon finder tool is pretty good, and you can sneak in to many dungeons. You have higher chance of geting kicked if people figure out that you have no idea about the heoric - so i suggest pt 3.

Thats about it.

If you want to do raids, you will need to find a guild, otherwise for heroics, going solo can also do.

Good post and very interesting. The introduction of the Dungeon Finder pretty much confirmed the end of my flirtation with WoW. I never got to 80th, so Heroics didn't come into it, but the confirmation of the final comodification of gameplay that the Dungeon Finder introduced was apparent even at lower levels.

The underlying flaw doesn't, in my opinion, come from the introduction of a mechanism that puts groups together automatically. I think that's actually a useful feature. It's much deeper than that.

Many MMOs, but in particular WoW, have moved from a model where your character is developed by discrete actions to one where it develops by cumulative actions. There was always an element of repetition, but the repetition has now been codified and standardised.

A long time ago, most desired gear dropped directly from mobs. If you wanted it you had to find the mob and kill it. Loot tables, the RNG and demand meant that you might have to do this a number of times before you got the piece you wanted, hence the element of repetition, but once that piece DID drop there was no particular need to do it again.

The rot probably set in with formalised, tiered raiding, which brought the concept of gearing up a whole guild in the best gear from one tier to attempt the tier above. You couldn't then stop when you had the piece of gear you wanted, you had to carry on repeating the content until everyone in your guild's raid force had what they needed. You could also quickly be assessed by others as to your capability by just a brief glance at what you were wearing.

From this we increasingly moved to systems where, rather than killing specific mobs that fropped what you needed, you killed mobs or performed activities that paid you in tokens or credits. These you would cash in for the best gear available. This began to mean repeating the same content attritionally, often to the point where no-one in the group actively wanted to be doing what they were doing for the umpteenth time.

WoW's continuing success demonstrates that an awful lot of people are willing to do something they don't particularly enjoy if they are paid sufficiently well at the end to buy something they want. So am I in the physical world, but not as a leisure activity.

There are a lot of great things about WoW and loads of fun to be had playing it, but, for me at least, repeating dungeons ad infinitum to build up credits to spend to be able to do the same or similar ones on a harder setting is never going to be one of them.

Overall the Dungeon Finder has much improved the experience of doing PvE group content, and I can really only recommend trying it.

The DF has drastically increased the accessability of group content. That may be to your liking.

However, the typical experience once you are in the dungeon is abysmal compared to earlier times and I am pretty sure nobody denies that :).

Generally I agree with your post. 80 heroics are about as boring as it gets if you are a DD. The other players will hardly even look at you. The heroic is part of their daily grind and unless you are in the LK-heroics you will practically never wipe, no matter what you do as DD.

Playing tank is also quite trivial if you just dare to. Just chain-pull. if you ake breaks the other players will start to pull and you may wipe.

Badly equipped tanks are matched with LK-heroic-mode healers. Just drop the healer a line that you are tanking in greens and he will usually enjoy the rare 'challenge'.

Playing healer can be rough if the DDs take a lot of damage. But unless you are like Tobold it shouldn't influence your experience too much if some DD blames you of what-ever. :)Concentrate on healing the tank, tell your group that you have bad equip and you will be fine.

I would add: "your experience in dungeons greatly depend on your ability to tell other player that they can ##$@ themselves and their gearscore"

I would suggest macros:as tank: "/p Hi all! I'll be your tank this dungeon. Yes, I know that your 90000 GS warlock has more health. If it bothers you, leave now and wait another 30 mins debuff + 30 mins queue. If you say gogogo or anything like that, I sit down and grab a drink, maybe Alt-Tab and read my e-mail"

as healer: "/p Hi all! I'm the healer in this run and will keep the tank alive. If you are not the tank and turn up dead, l2p n00b. If you say "lol healz" I just put you on /ignore"

as DPS simply right-click the chat interface and uncheck the party channel so you save yourself from lot of childish spam about GS

- If you choose to be a tank please use the non heroic dungeons to practise tanking, preferably while you still level. You'll have instant invites for normal at level 68+ too, get to know the instances and then when you meet the raid-equipped players who just want their two Frosties in as little time as possible you don't have to ask for directions.

- Even when you think you'll replace an item tomorrow, there is no excuse to not enchant/gem it today. It doesn't have to be the best enchant, for every slot exist enchants that cost only a couple of Infinite Dust.

- Feel free to roll Need on damage items when you tank, but *please* be fair when one of the damage dealers in the group also rolled need, give it to him. He will pass on any tank item the next boss drops.

The random dungeon thing is.... well, random. Your mileage may vary, a lot. All the high-end raiders have stopped running the daily long time ago, being submerged in frost emblems and (assuming they are not bored to death) run the randomday quest with one alt.With the exception of new dungeons (Hall of Reflections in particular), all the others will probably be done quickly and without trouble, regardless of anything, since almost everyone now overgears them.Knowing the instance because you've done it in normal while leveling is all you need, in reality. I've run Trial of the Champion with a non def-capped tank which had less HP than me in cat form. It went fine, and the healer was happy not to fall asleep for once.

@Bhagapuss: the facts you state are wrong. The best gear cannot be bought by emblems and for raiders "emblem-farming" is rarely an issue, by the time a raid is mastered they have more than enough to buy the pieces they need (most of the slots being filled by "classic" random loots).

Thanks Tobold very informative. I have decent PVP gear. Should I use the AH to swap out this gear for crafted gear or will the PVP gear hold up in the heroic dungeons until I get PVE gear?

One other question, it sounds like the DF is a good tool. Why do so many still advertise for groups over trade rather than using this feature. I probably know this answer but was wondering if there is a good reason.

Maybe I am in the minority here, but I strongly disagree with your advice to just roll need. If you are in the dungeon as DPS then roll need on any DPS item you can use. But if you decided to join the dungeon as a DPS because its the "cushy" job and I am in there busting my butt as a tank, I am probably going to be upset if I lose a need roll for a piece of tanking plate to some DPS.

I ran Forge of Souls Heroic 18 times for the tank boots that drop off the last boss. They dropped once and I lost the roll to a DPS DK who dropped group immediately after he won. I was not happy, but the anonymity of Cross Realm queues meant there was nothing I could do.

While Tobold's advice is true, you can pretty much roll need on anything you want, it isn't a nice thing to do really. If a person is in the dungeon as a role I tend to not roll need against them on a piece of gear intended for that role. But then again, Karma always wins in the long run.

I have decent PVP gear. Should I use the AH to swap out this gear for crafted gear or will the PVP gear hold up in the heroic dungeons until I get PVE gear?

PvP epics should do just fine. And they have the added advantage of fooling Gearscore into believing you are better equipped than you are. :)

it sounds like the DF is a good tool. Why do so many still advertise for groups over trade rather than using this feature.

On my server most trade chat groups are for raid dungeons, not heroics. The only reason to look for a heroics group in trade chat is to be able to pre-select people, usually based on Gearscore. So basically those are groups designed to keep *you* (as a starting heroics player) out.

Looking at success rate alone you are certainly right: The DF currently is perfect. Now, players overgear the current content by a degree that I am desperately searching for a superlative of 'overgeared'. I am pretty sure that is the reason and not the DF.

But even if the Df were completely responsible for you successfully completely heroic dungeons:Quality of group content is not determined by success rate alone, is it for you?

The only comments I have are related to starting gear. It's not so easy for most people to make 1000 gold in a few hours, especially if they don't have gathering professions and don't know how to play the AH. Imagine the guy who got his engineering up into the high 300's without the AH and doesn't want to give up all that hard work. For cash-poor players, blue quest rewards and PvP gear is great for starting out, and as an added benefit, you get more upgrades from drops that no one else wants. :-)

While starting up pug tanking is rough, taking the tanking role does have its advantage. The group building is not started until a tank joins the queue. You literally are the priority, thus the instant random heroic queue. This is also the way of leveling, just tank through as many dungeon as you can stomach.

Yet again I must point out that the Dungeon Finder has been around for years, it is the addition of rewards that made it popular. So when people talk about "the addition of the DF," they are really talking about the same group finding tool they ignored for most of their WoW career, the "addition" being to make it the easiest way to get loot.

@Nils said-"Quality of group content is not determined by success rate alone, is it for you?"

No, but what be yer point? Back in pre-DF days, lots of decent folks felt it weren't worth the effort ta find a pug, onlies ta get stuck with a pain-in-the-arse fluggernubber. So, a lot of what ya found in the pugging scene was fluggernubbers. Nowadays, the fluggernubbers is still there, but they's diluted by a hole lot more decent folks, and ya runs inta them a lot less. So, yeah, is a better situation now.

Is no offense, but yer wrong. Used ta be a "Looking Fer Group" tool, but it was dang near useless. Was little more than a heavily gimped bulletin board, which be why folks used /trade instead. Blizz threw the whole thing out and replaced it with the far more robustified and efficientalized DF. Also, the emblem bribe fer doin' heroics goes back ta TBC - is still a dude in Shat with a daily heroic quest, if ya wants.

Yet again I must point out that the Dungeon Finder has been around for years, it is the addition of rewards that made it popular.

That statement is completely wrong and misleading. What *was* around "for years" was various incarnations of looking-for-group functionality, for years based on the meeting stones. It wasn't just the rewards that made the Dungeon Finder popular, but also all the added functionality, accessibility, and teleports to and from the dungeon. The Dungeon Finder is in a league of its own, not really comparable with the various failed LFG ideas Blizzard tried before.

On my servers there's almost no high-level crafted blues available and what is available is way over-priced (1,000g+)

iLevel 187 blues only cost a handful of gold to craft, the recipes are freely available to all crafters, and the materials common. I simply don't believe anyone ever actually sold an iLevel 187 blue for over 1,000 gold. And if that really would be the case, I'd recommend crafting them and selling them.

Tanked my very first WotLK dungeon on my 75 DK last night. I was expecting to get a bit of flak. I have run all WotLK dungeons a dozen times or more as DPS, and 450def/16K health at 75 is probably plenty...?

It went well other than some pre-pulls by a twitchy rogue. Nobody typed "gogogogo", though I could tell there was some impatience. And I don't think the healer's mana ever dropped below 3/4, so I will go much quicker next time.

My advice is to spend some time knowing what you are doing. Learn from the experience. Learn how to target, learn how to use macros, learn what a "focus" is. Just keep learning about the game and take Gevlon's advice about dorks.

About loot, though. In order for me to assess if I really need something, it takes 5 or 10 seconds to compare stats. That is rarely tolerated in dungeon finder. So needing on anything you see that fits your spec is OK by me. and GS is nice for that...if it has my stats and a higher GS (just hit shift while mousing over the new gear, and your equipped gear will pop up), I need.

If people bitch that you needed on the wrong thing, give it away if they are right. I've done it before. Certainly shuts people up.

@Bristal an excellent addon for fast gear evaluation is RatingBuster. It clearly displays stat gains/losses and even calculates talent based effects (such Int -> AP -> SP for enhancement shaman). You can easily customize it to only show stats you care about. With that addon a quick glance will tell you if an item is an upgrade or not.

That statement is completely wrong and misleading. What *was* around "for years" was various incarnations of looking-for-group functionality, for years based on the meeting stones. It wasn't just the rewards that made the Dungeon Finder popular, but also all the added functionality, accessibility, and teleports to and from the dungeon. The Dungeon Finder is in a league of its own, not really comparable with the various failed LFG ideas Blizzard tried before.

This must be what it's like for EVE players to watch the latest WoW clone claim to be "totally different, you're so wrong to say it's even remotely the same!!!" Sorry, it's a little different, but mostly the same. You have to be thinking very deep inside the box to think the Dungeon Finder is "completely different" as a LFG system.

The functionality to queue up as a role was added with Wrath. The meeting stones were usable as teleports for years before that.

3.3 expanded it to battlegroups, which necessitated more direct teleports, and started offering awesome rewards.

Take away the emblem rewards. I think it is laughable to suggest even a fraction of players would still be using the Dungeon Finder.

@Samus: sorry, it IS completely different, and even witout the emblem rewards people would still be using it en-masse for the ease of use.

Before: add yourself to the "LFG tool", wait for 1-2 hours to get an invite if your're lucky (or spend 30 mins waiting for /w replies from people who are afk). Alternatively, sit in the middle of a city (= can't do anything else, notably quests when leveling) and endlessly spam /2 to form a group. Ah, and after this you still have 5+mins to get the group there.

Now: click on the button, forget about it and go ahead doing whatever you want to do. Window pops up, click "ok". Poof, you're at the beginning of the instance and ready to rock. Someone drops/refuses/whatever? click "tp out of instance", go ahead doing whatever you were doing, and click "tp to instance" when the group is filled again.

The sheer amount of time saved has changed the face of leveling. Now it's indeed possible to level ONLY in the instances (expecially if you are a tank). This is not a "small change".

There are some crickets chirping in an empty Naxx raid that know what happens when something no longer gives the best/easiest reward. Everything in online gaming history has indicated that players will do the worst, most boring, grindy thing they have to if it advances their character the fastest. The Dungeon Finder is no different. I stand by my statement, suggesting that without the reward it would be the first of hundreds of activities where players would finally pick fun over advancement...laughable.

I am well aware of the impact the Dungeon Finder has had, but those are small changes having a big impact. The biggest change, aside from the rewards, was to expand it to include the entire battlegroup. That doesn't make the tool itself profoundly different, that just connects it to a much larger pool of players.

The real change to the tool itself was the teleportation, but again, meeting stones already did that. Grouping players from different servers meant that wouldn't work anymore. Teleporting players directly into the instance wasn't some "brilliant innovation," it was just the obvious fix.

Sorry, the Dungeon Finder is just a regular-ass LFG system. I would argue in some ways, it is STILL inferior to the LFG system that CoH launched with 6 years ago.

Just roll need on anything? Thats a very good way to get vote kicked if your a rogue who rolls against a hunter for a bow, a hunter rolling against a rogue for an imba dagger, etc etc.

That said, very good post. Glad I poped by to take it on board, I have directed a few others here as well. We still have a few newbies in our guild leveling there first character and this advice applies to them as much as anyone.

Final point though, given the consistent appalling behaviour and language I see on a dailey basis directed against any "nub" in hcs, no way no how are my kids allowed to play wow.